no comprendo!
today has been somewhat interesting. started out with a special breakfast only for me. Susanne and the old Swedish couple got scrambled eggs with tomatoes, but i got a cheese omelette. :-) Adolfo and Anna have figured out i don't like tomatoes so much, so today i got special food and the other day when we had salad everyone had tomatoes on theirs, but none on mine. that's nice. Adolfo is really a very sweet man and really cares. I'm glad i get to stay with them even if i have to deal with noise all the time.
but today's class has been all about not understanding certain things. i got one thing figured out, but the phrase "me vende" on the backs of cars confuses me big time. and Hugo has spent a good 15 minutes trying his hardest to explain it to me, but i just don't get it. i'm glad it's breaktime.
please, someone with knowledge of Spanish, explain to me how "me vende" translates.
2 comments:
hey Jenny. This is one of those idiomatic phrases that really is gramatically wrong but has come into common use and so is accepted. It wouldn't make sense to someone in another spanish country though....maybe. Usually we would see "se vende" on cars which would literally mean "one sells" or basically "for sale." "me vende" actually means "I am selling myself" which has a not so good meaning...but you could look at it as "for sale by owner" or "I am selling this myself" so to speak. I agree...totally confusing....but you will find other phrases like that in Spanish. We also have them in English but we don't notice them because they are normal to us.
I wanted to give you a verse to lean on when you are discouraged. I actually wrote it into a song but it is pretty repetitious so I will just give you the verse. You know, when you are trying to write a song in another language and you want it to be more than two lines long....because that is all you know....you repeat a lot!! Anyway, here it is. It is from the Spanish NIV in John somewhere.
En este mundo tendran sufrimiento. Pero, cobren animo! Yo he vencido al mundo!!
Learn a little....
One more thing on se vende. That can also mean that something sells itself - as in se cayo - I may have spelled that wrong - but means "it fell by itself" instead of I dropped it or I accidentally knocked it over...
You get the idea...
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